English / Writing Power Basics

Like the Science and Social Studies Power Basics, this series provides the essentials of a junior or senior high level curriculum content-wise (adhering to NSE standards), but is more user-friendly than traditional textbooks, written a 4th grade reading level, and features explanations that apply skills to daily life, step-by-step lessons with clearly defined examples, and workbook activities that provide frequent practice and review while supporting different learning styles.

The program has four components: student book, workbook, teacher's guide, and test packet. The student book serves as the textbook and features lessons that follow a consistent format: a list of vocabulary words to know, instructional text that presents essential information in short, easy-to-understand sections, and a set of questions that lets students apply what they've just learned. Additional features of the student book include reviews (multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank) after each unit, additional application activities, critical thinking exercises, hints to help students remember specific pieces of information, explanations about how the material connects to real life, and a few illustrations and charts.

The workbook provides of variety of practice and extension activities for each lesson in the student book. These are particularly geared towards different learning styles and answers are provided in a separate key. Types of exercises include fill-in-the-blank, short answer, rewriting sentences, reading comprehension, multiple choice, and more.

The Teacher Guide gives an overview of each unit in the student book, with suggestions for additional extension activities as well as a complete answer key to all the practice activities & unit reviews. Also provided is a chart showing how to correlate the textbook material with the workbook activities.

The Test Packet includes a pre-test, post-test and a unit test for each unit in the student text. This packet also includes suggestions for testing students who do not test well, along with test-taking strategies for both the Power Basics series and standardized testing.

Single Packs include the Student Book, the Workbook & Key, the Teacher's Guide, and the Test Pack.

Though not as strong or challenging as most curriculums, this series (from a secular publisher) is perfect for students who get overwhelmed with the length and complexity of traditional textbooks, but still need an established course to learn the basic English skills they need in life.